* Bochs 2.5.1
Bochs is a portable x86 PC emulation software package that emulates enough of
the x86 CPU, related AT hardware, and BIOS to run Windows, Linux, *BSD, Minix,
and other OS's, all on your workstation.
About this first port I made:
- It uses the SDL module for the GUI, the Amiga module would be to rewrite.
- Audio doesn't work, as there is neither SDL or AHI supported, only Linux
(with ALSA) and Windows modules are implemented.
- The CDROM has been activated but doesn't seem to work. I suppose that would
be useful only for installing Windows ... that our machines wouldn't be able
to run at a decent speed.
- I had problems with the keymap on my Sam440, it was not possible to use ':' !
But it works on my MicroAOne with a PS/2 keyboard.
- The provided SDL keymap is used by default but maybe you will want to modify
it.
- I tried several games and I noticed that some of them have a display problem
but they were usable though.
- Instead of waiting more before this release, I prefered to make it available
even if no optimization has been done yet.
* Use DOS and play DOS games
Get a floppy disk image of DOS, for example DOS 6.22.
I found an image at http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/dos.html
I tried to use FreeDOS and create a hard drive image but that was a mess.
Create a hard drive image (here 250 MB):
bximage -hd -size=250 -mode=flat -q hda
Update the config file bochsrc with the last line of the output if
necessary.
Boot on the DOS floppy disk :
bochs -q
Run fdisk.
Reset the emulated computer and format the hard drive :
format c:
Reset again. The environment is ready
** On Amiga
Install diskimage, available on os4depot. If it was not previously installed,
reboot your Amiga.
My advice is to run bochs inside the directory where this archive was unpacked.
Run DiskImageGUI and double-click on IPC0, then copy or unzip all the
abandonware games that you want.
My other advice : Limit the game directories to 7 characters because I was
unable
to use auto-completion under DOS.
Now that you've populated your hard drive image, double-click on IPC0 again to
unmount.
Run bochs again:
bochs -q
Type "C:" and "dir". Now do what you want, in one word: enjoy!
** On Linux
sudo mkdir /mnt/loop
sudo /sbin/losetup /dev/loop0 hda -o 32256
sudo mount -o loop /dev/loop0 /mnt/loop
Unzip all the abandonware games that you want in /mnt/loop !
My advice : Limit the game directories to 8 characters because I was
unable to use auto-completion under DOS and to find the ~ character.
sudo umount /mnt/loop
That's great, you populated your hard drice successfully, run bochs again:
BXSHARE=../bios ../bochs -q
Type "C:" and "dir". Now do what you want.
* Install Windows 98
About 1 hour on a quad-core station.
That's not possible to install Windows 98 with the Amiga version yet (lack
of working CDROM support).